


Yikáísídáhí

by Nagaina



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, TW: passive-aggressive suicidal tendencies on display, this is all Gunnslaughter's fault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-23
Updated: 2016-10-23
Packaged: 2018-08-24 02:55:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8354146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nagaina/pseuds/Nagaina
Summary: Hanzo takes what remains of Jesse McCree back home.





	

La Bajada Mesa loomed above the rocky plain of the desert south of Santa Fe, a volcanic escarpment six hundred feet high, its dark face scarred with the pale, switchbacked track that was all that remained of El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro. Calling it a road was, by any reasonable standard, extraordinarily generous though in the days before motorized transport that was what it was: the route by which travelers on foot or horseback would cross the desert, and the basalt monolith that split it, to reach the city and its markets, the tracks of their passage etched so deeply into the earth that the passage of centuries could not erase them. Travelers in the present century generally explored it for entirely different reasons: for the adventure (even now it was not a gentle hike or a leisurely day stroll; the altitude, the extremes in temperature, the sheer remote distance of it from everything even in an age of constantly interconnected communication and hover-capable emergency services vehicles, did not allow for that), to connect in some way to the lost past and tenuous bonds of heritage (the first time he had come to this place, the one who brought him taught him the words for everything -- plants, creatures, the vast open sky by day and the constellations by night -- in two languages, Spanish and _diné bizaad_ , the tongue his grandfather handed down to him along with his beautiful dark eyes and lovely bones), because the high desert was one of the few places left where one could retreat into genuine and absolute solitude (he had not been alone when first he came to this place, and he felt the absence at his side now like a knife between his ribs, cold and burning with every breath). His purpose for taking that path, still far beyond the bounds of what most considered civilization, partook of none of those reasons and the ones he carried rested on his heart with the weight of a mountain.

It was simpler, by far, to concentrate entirely upon the practicalities in the days immediately afterward. It helped that, at some level, Jesse had always expected to die by violence and had prepared for that eventuality with a thoroughness that had struck them all with the force of a blow. He had no _will_ , of course -- being an internationally wanted fugitive with a completely ridiculous bounty on one’s head tended to foreclose on such legal niceties -- but his actual wishes were rather well-defined and clearly expressed on the microdrive they found among his effects. The contents of three bank accounts established under three separate and distinct identities were to be folded together into a trust fund for the children of Silvia Reyes-Valente and Larissa Reyes. If there was any conceivable way for any of them to actually _claim_ the ludicrous bounty on his head, they were _absolutely_ supposed to do so as a final _fuck all y’all very much_ from beyond the grave, just for him. The remainder of his worldly effects should be disposed of as seemed most equitable. He wished to be cremated and his ashes taken home to New Mexico -- preferably scattered. It wasn’t, he wrote wryly, as though he had a plot anywhere waiting for him. They were not to have a goddamned funeral of any variety; a well-lubricated wake was an acceptable alternative provided nobody got too maudlin about it.

(Dr. Ziegler, acting in her capacity as a physician affiliated with the Hôpital Universitaire de Genève, issued the documents certifying the date and time and circumstances of his death and made the necessary arrangements with the crematorium. She remained coolly calm and composed throughout it all, drank harder than nearly anyone else at the wake, and pursued his last request with a vengeful thoroughness that ended with the organizational coffers swollen _and_ a reopened investigation into the precise origins of a number of the claims against him. And when the time came to take him home again, she made certain that the resources were freely available, though she could not bear to do it herself; no one could blame her. She had buried entirely too many people she loved already.)

The airlines were all entirely sympathetic to and understanding of his desire to keep the sleekly elegant ceramic container, richly glazed in red and gold, that contained the earthly remains of his heart with him during the journey, almost annoyingly so -- he wished, unworthily, for someone, somewhere to be less than completely accommodating so he could vent even the slightest trace of the fury seething just beneath his skin. So, too, was the staff at the hotel in Santa Fe when he arrived in the small hours of the morning, lightheaded with exhaustion, restful sleep having escaped him some weeks ago and showing no intent of returning any time soon. The morning concierge had answered all his questions with a sort of anxious earnestness that made him wonder precisely how terrible he looked in the eyes of others, though he could not quite bring himself to care. That kindly young woman warned him, repeatedly, about the necessity of proper preparation: hydration, sturdy comfortable shoes, appropriate clothing, someone familiar with the area to act as a guide or at the very least a map. He thanked her gravely for her assistance, accepted her recommendation when it came to off-road vehicle rentals, gathered the supplies he felt he would need, and set out that afternoon.

(Genji had offered to accompany him -- offered with a gentleness that had nearly undone him on the spot and which he declined far more roughly than he had wanted, though his brother did not appear to take that to heart. Almost, driving across the desert, he wished he had not. Genji, after all, had known Jesse longer; his grief was as deep, though he nursed it differently; his brother might, he suspected, understand precisely how much and why he hated every breath he took and every beat of his heart. Better to leave him with those who would know how to provide him comfort.)

From the place where he finally parked on the lower slope to the peak of the mesa’s southern edge was a hike of some two hours and it was no easy ascent. The trail at that altitude was more imagination than reality, scrubbed almost to nothing by cycles of wind and rain, canted at ankle-breaking angles in some places, completely obscured by rockfall and ferociously blooming scrub ground cover in others. The air was alive with the scent of the desert in spring, the song of the tiny brown birds that made their homes in the stunted junipers that lined the lower slopes; he stopped more than once to rest and drink and watch them as they flitted from tree to brush and back again, going still at the passage of a hawk’s shadow. It was not as warm by day as it would be in the summer, the weight of the sun on his face as he climbed a pleasant counterpart to a breeze that still carried the memory of winter, cool and dry. Once the sun went down it would cold, high as it was off the desert floor, and the wind would rise, making it colder still. In a way he welcomed it, and his effort at gathering enough deadfall along the way was decidedly desultory.

The sun was touching the rim of the western horizon as he reached his destination, the long, flat ridge of the mesa’s edge, looming high and basalt-black above the paler plain below. Twilight stained the high, thin clouds overhead and the rocky ridge on which he walked a bloody crimson as he made his way to the place he sought: a windbreak half built by human hands and half by nature, a crescent of jumbled stone and wind-twisted juniper trees. The basin was already in deep shadow, variegated shades of gray and violet reflecting the darkening sky as he went swiftly about the task of gathering enough loose stone to make a temporary firepit and a bit more wood to burn in it -- night came on swiftly in the desert and he found he had not forgotten it. By the time he touched the flame from Jesse’s lighter to the handful of tinder he gathered it was nearly full dark, the first stars scattering the sky in the east.

It was the lack of a grave to which he could not reconcile himself -- the _wrongness_ of it a splinter of discontent lodged in a place he could not reach, a thing he could grind his fangs against in a way that was nearly comforting. _Genji_ had a grave, even if the ashes under it were not his own, a point upon which he had coldly refused to yield in the days after the worst mistake of his life. It was no fault of the perfectly traditional and respectful gravestone, incised with the characters of his brother’s name and set with a touchscreen that displayed a selection of photos, that he entirely ignored it for the subsequent decade and returned instead to the scene of the crime; he was not the only one who loved Genji Shimada, and that place was for them -- some faithful soul had brought him flowers for _years_ after the family itself had ceased to do more than curse his name for the misfortune his existence had brought upon them. That Jesse did not and would not have even that was a final, cutting injustice among multitudes. That the man he loved more than life itself should be remembered -- if he was remembered at all -- as a criminal, as a thief and a murderer, and not for who and what he truly was, a hard knot of pain in the tapestry of his sorrow.

(There were, of course, no next of kin to inform -- Jesse freely admitted that he had never known his father, he saw no reason to concern himself with the mother who had abandoned him as a child, and the grandparents who had taken him in were thirty years dead themselves. His teammates were, and had been for more than half his life, all he had known of family, with all the weight and density of emotion that implied. Thus far, no one had suggested finding what was left of Gabriel Reyes, at least in part because no one could even begin to guess what doing so would unleash, if anything at all.)

The wind rose cold and fierce as the last of the light fled the vault of the sky, howling along the heights of the mesa, desolation given voice. Hanzo greatly desired to howl along with it but held his silence, at least for the moment, as he opened the pack he had carried with him on his long walk. The bottle of seventy year old Macallan he withdrew from its careful wrapping and padding was the most ridiculously expensive whiskey any of them could find and had come with a framed certificate authenticating it as such, which was hanging on the wall of Watchpoint Gibraltar’s rec center. It had seemed, upon reflection, that spending an improbable amount of money derived from his equally improbable bounty was _precisely_ the sort of thing that Jesse would have found immoderately amusing; he could almost hear the laughter, warm and husky, just behind his ear. Poured into a glass perfectly suited for tasting, it shone dark in the firelight, a shade or two off Jesse’s eyes at their lightest. The cigar laid next to it was strictly the worst imaginable. The ceramic bowl was a gift, pottery glazed a deep metallic blue with a hint of pattern that could almost be scales; he scooped the sand that filled it now from inside the circle of firelight, slid three sticks of _kyo-nishiki_ into it, and breathed deeply of the smoke, cinnamon and sandalwood and benzoin. Jesse had, in general, little tolerance for incense but this one he had liked for reasons he had declined to elaborate upon. The urn he took into his lap and held nestled against his stomach, fingertips tracing the glazed-on pattern as the night grew colder around him and the stars slowly filled the sky overhead.

(They had not precisely _hidden_ the after-action report from him -- at first, they had no need to do so, for he was not uninjured himself and for some days after the return to Gibraltar it took far, far more strength than he liked to merely crawl out of bed and keep his balance at the same time. _High caliber rifle round creased your skull_ , Lucio had explained, and while the subsequent fracture was relatively uncomplicated, the concussion and its after-effects were unpleasant and the wound itself had been horrifyingly bloody at the time. He spent his waking hours and no few number of the sleeping at Jesse’s bedside in the infirmary, head pressed to his chest, counting breaths and heartbeats, silently willing him to wake, to open his eyes, to smile wryly down at him and invite him to get whatever yelling he had to do over with before Angela got there to break up the party. It was likewise Lucio who left his datapad at the bedside when he was summoned away to help with a bit of emergency first aid following an ill-fated experiment in the kitchen and it was Lucio who had, mercifully, sedated him and made certain there was nothing sharp in his own room afterwards.)

The ambush had been elegantly executed, designed specifically to isolate and pick off a single member of their team. Malignant fortune had made that member him, alone in the maze of rooftops and fire escapes that he favored for purposes of positioning, for acquiring targets that he alone could hit. Well, perhaps not alone. He suspected strongly that he owed at least one of his new scars to Widowmaker and cordially wished the woman in Hell for it, even as he was forced to admire the skill that made that shot non-lethal. The jaws of it had closed around him even as he fell, senseless and unaware, the rest of the team comprehending what had happened only after he failed to answer attempts at communication. Jesse had, of course, returned for him, because there had never been any chance that he would not, not even the slightest possibility that he would leave him behind. And that was the last thing he had ever done, a final sacrifice in a life that had seen too much offered for too little in return. By the time Genji cut through the force surrounding them, bringing Mercy with him, it was already too late -- too much blood lost, his brain too long without oxygen, and while his body had responded to to her efforts at resuscitation, nothing else of him had or ever would.

(There were other methods she could attempt, more experimental methods, that they had all rejected, some more forcefully than others. Angela had felt it her duty to ask and had not hidden her relief at the unanimity of the refusal.)

He was not entirely certain when the tears began -- he became aware of them when the wind scoured his face even more coldly. The fire was dying before him and he fed it a bit more fuel, juniper branches popping and hissing in the flames, though he could not explain even to himself why he made the effort. His grief was a serpent with its fangs sunk into his heart, its poisons an all-consuming void of loss and a black despair that had no end. He was not worth -- he had never been worth and could never be worth -- the price his beloved had paid to save him. His own life was nothing but a series of failures and regrets, stitched together with good intentions, and sometimes not even that. A mistake from the beginning that could not seem to _end._

The cold seeped into his bones, sinking so deeply he no longer felt it, his body ceasing to shiver. He desired with a child’s pure and perfect want to close his eyes and lay down next to this fire and let the cold and dark and wind pry his broken soul from his flesh.  
Warmth settled against his back -- a sure and steady warmth that chased the cold away as though it had never been and he went utterly still at the touch of it, his heart pounding wildly in his chest. His eyes were closed -- he could not remember when he closed them -- and he did not dare look. The lightest trace of a caress ghosted across the nape of his neck, the sensation not unlike a kiss and it sent an involuntary thrill the length of his spine.

_I need you to wake up a little, darlin’._

The sound that escaped his throat was somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “And why would I wish to do that?”

 _What? Me askin’ you to isn’t enough?_ The warmth enveloped him completely, strong arms around his middle, a breath of terrible cigars and generally excellent whiskey, something sweet and spicy.

“No.” The word caught on his tongue, came out harsher than he wished. “Because you are _dead_ and I am _hallucinating_.” Hypothermic, dehydrated, exhausted beyond sanity, the small parts of him that remained rational even at this extreme muttered at some depth where even the urge to self-destruction could not reach.

 _Certain of that, are you?_ Laughter close against his ear. _My darlin’, my dearest heart, you are a goddamned ex-Yakuza ninja-kannushi who shares living space with not one but two dragons. Are you absolutely sure you want to claim that talking to a ghost is the bridge too far?_

This time the sob emerged without leavening and, once they began, he found it impossible to stop. Something -- possibly some trick of the warm and soothing and strangely gentle wind -- murmured comfort in his ears, gathered him close, held him until his weeping slowed, calmed, finally stopped. When he found his voice at last he could barely give it breath. “ _Why?_ ”

 _Because I thought you were dying._ The honesty of it jolted his eyes half-open. _Because I didn’t want to live in a world without you in it. Because where you go, I follow._

“And yet you would ask me to continue without you.” His voice cracked on the last word and he closed his eyes against the renewed flood of tears.

 _Yeah, that ain’t real fair of me, I admit._ A low chuckle. _Color me a genuine hypocrite on that one but you still need to stay awake. Just until morning, darlin’._

“Bastard,” He muttered, but there was no heat in it.

 _By the legal definition of the term even._ The warmth surged close around him again. _Look up._

He did, tilted his head back until it rested on something that felt like a broad shoulder, vision swimming. The sky overhead was a vault of perfect darkness unmarred by the slightest hint of light pollution, stars spiraling into infinity in all directions, the wind fanning them to flaming brilliance. Almost directly overhead the filmy silver curtain of the Milky Way hung in a great starry river spanning nearly from horizon to horizon, breathtaking in its beauty.

_You remember what I told you that was called?_

“Yikáísídáhí,” He replied, likely mangling the pronunciation, too heartsick and weary to entirely care.

_It waits for dawn. Can you do that for me, darlin’? Please?_

“Yes,” He finally whispered, burying his face in angle of a neck and a shoulder that were likely not there, but he could not bring himself to care about that, either.

Morning came as swiftly as the night in the high desert, sunrise a hint of silver in the vault of the eastern heavens, paling through all the stages between there and the very palest, brightest blue in what felt like moments, the sun itself an eye-searingly brilliant line of gold across the ridge of the mountains. The fire had burned itself to ashes hours before and when Hanzo finally moved it was slowly and carefully, every joint and every muscle stiff with cold and shaking with exhaustion, his mind empty of thought and spinning with weariness. The wind had died away from its howling banshee wail to a gentle spring-perfumed caress, warmer than it had any right to be this early in the day.

It took three tries to make it to his feet, the urn tucked protectively close to his body, and his progress to the edge of the escarpment was slow and slowed still further by loose rocks and treacherous footing. He worked at the clasps holding it closed with cold-stiffened fingers and, as the sun broke the horizon and washed across the mesa in a burst of warm and golden light, they sprung free and the breeze caught what spilled forth in a shimmering silvery curtain not entirely unlike a veil of stars or life-giving spring rain or heartfelt tears. He watched until it dispersed entirely, carried out over the desert on errant currants, free and at peace, beyond pain. For a long moment, he considered joining it, and it took all of the strength he had left not to do so, to step away from the edge and turn back the way he had come.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by this: https://gunnslaughter.tumblr.com/post/150446880556/page-1-page-2-page-3-page-4-page-5
> 
> Even now I am not sure if this is retaliation, continuance, or primal scream therapy.


End file.
